Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement: Village Narrative

When was it lost?  Does it become fractured and irrelevant once a society grows too large, looms too complicated, decides to go off in different directions?

Once upon a time, villages had a specific narrative, identifiable, accepted, the mythology of its unique character.  If you came from Village-X, you knew the narrative — the story of your group, where you came from, what gods controlled the universe, who fought bravely, how you came about.  A stranger from another village had a different narrative; it was called Village-Y-narrative.  They had strange ways.

Perhaps there was trading between the two; sometimes, inter-marriage occurred and the complications of rearranging belief-systems to accommodate any differences had to be allowed for.

In today’s society, the village narrative has all but disappeared.  Not only has it disappeared — but even within the fractionalization, there are further micro-fractures, where no one can agree even upon the most fundamental of core beliefs.  That is when empathy disappears, replaced by laws and statutes to maintain some semblance of order and structure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the village narrative of working as a “team” with the Federal Agency or Postal Unit can no longer remain compatible.

Does the Agency show any empathy?  Or are they simply ignoring the problem?  Will you be placed on a PIP?  Will you be terminated?  Is the “village” out to banish and get rid of you?

Contact a Retirement Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law.  It may be already time to find another “village”, inasmuch as the current village narrative no longer includes you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement from the OPM: Silent Suffering

It is now an outdated concept; applied to generations past, “silent suffering” was something people once endured, often within the context of internal turmoil, domestic abuse, childhood neglect or, worse, of skeletons in the closet that haunted a damaged psyche and repressed within layers upon layers of hurt and hatred.

In modernity, people have been encouraged to express themselves, to engage in therapeutic self-revelations, etc.  To remain “silent” is deemed unhealthy; to “suffer”, unnecessary; and thus to combine the two evils and to live in “silent suffering” is to unhealthily and unnecessarily inflict damage to one’s self.

Yet, that is precisely what many Federal and Postal employees under FERS do — of engaging in silent suffering by continuing to work despite a chronic medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

Such silent suffering further damages one’s case for a Federal Disability Retirement annuity by continuing to make it “appear” as if everything is fine, including receiving glowing performance reviews, leading the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to conclude: Well, if your agency believes you are doing a fine job, then how can you claim that you cannot do your job?

Consult with a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether — even in modernity — you should still continue to engage in that old way of silent suffering.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Refutation of Stefan Zweig’s Essay

FERS OPM Medical Retirement: Refutation of Stefan Zweig’s Essay, “Books are the Gateway to the World”.

Not quite a refutation, but merely a protest — and perhaps a defense of illiteracy.  Zweig writes beautifully; persuasively; in colorful prose that captivates; in convincing form — if not in logical argumentation, but more as a poet who is convinced that words, books, literacy and the spread of the written word is indispensable to life itself.

He ends with this poetic flourish: “The more intimately the man associates with books the more profoundly he experiences the unity of life, for his personality is multiplied; he sees not only with his own eyes but with the countless eyes of the soul, and by their sublime help he travels with loving sympathy through the whole world.”

Who can argue with that?  Who can so poetically refute and rebut a sentence of such insightful beauty?  Yet, it is not with the argument for books and literacy that is objectionable, but rather, the notion that the man with whom he met and befriended but who is later found to be illiterate — that this rampage of sorrow and defense of literacy is at the expense of this unfortunate man.

Consider how he describes such a person: “He is walled in by himself, because he knows nothing of books; his life is dull, troglodytic (Definition: a “member of any of various peoples (as in antiquity) who lived or were reputed to live chiefly in caves” — i.e., “cavemen” or “cavewomen”).  And: “I was shocked to think how narrow the world must seem to the man who has no books.”

True, Zweig may have felt pity for his new-found friend, whom he previously described as a person who possessed a “genius for mimicry and caricatured everybody”, and whom he found fascinating and of enjoyable company — until, it turns out, that he discovered his illiteracy.

The essay ends without a conclusion; perhaps he took the time (without writing about it) with the friend and taught him how to read.  More likely, they went their separate ways — the other fellow pitied for the remainder of Zweig’s days, the author convinced that he was an individual to be pitied.  But that is the criticism to be posited, isn’t it?  That we make judgments without judging ourselves, and unjustifiably when we have the power to do something about the ills we encounter.

For Federal and Postal employees who have encountered that very circumstance — of facing judgments by others while nothing is being done — of a Federal Agency or the Postal Service that has determined that you are not worth “saving” because of a medical condition that now prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job; it is then time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Don’t wait around for help from your Agency or the Postal Service; it is likely that you will not receive it.  Instead, consult with a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  For, in the end, the decision to take the next step to “help yourself” will be up to you, and you should not consider the Federal Agency or the Postal Service to help you as your “friend” — leaving aside whether they will even feel a scintilla of pity for you; they won’t.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Desperation in a time of crisis

There is the crisis, perhaps born of a lingering problem allowed to fester and froth until the boiling point allowing for a simmering of persistent steam to rise and spill over; and then, of our reaction, our departure point where sanity and coherence become overwhelmed and replaced with a sense of doom.

We have all been through a crisis; it is part and parcel of a life lived; and though we never ask for it, it comes when least expected, when we are most vulnerable, and when we believe that we can no longer withstand the tornado of unbounded fury.

There have been moments where the crisis naturally passes, and we simply must await its presence and ultimate disappearance.  Then, there have been ones where we have the strength to muster, to counter and fight, and to overcome — and those are the ones where preparation in youth in replenishing and fortifying one’s strength of character and resolve allowed for the abundance of that inner reserve to take over, almost as if a transcendent, supernatural force took control and led one to greater heights of one’s capacity to withstand and defeat.

Then, at other times, where human strength alone may not have been enough, and it was the support of others — friends, family members, and even the family dog, who allowed one to survive and to continue on.  But it is the last within the list of responsive capabilities — where the crisis comes, and one’s sense of desperation in a time of crisis becomes apparent, and that is when the danger-point comes to the fore.

Desperation in a time of crisis is when one’s strength has been sapped; when the vulnerabilities are revealed like an open sore inviting infection to spread; and when no amount of support from family or friends can appease the soul of the epiphany of sorrow that will not be comforted and where the heaving sobs of despair cannot be stopped.  It is those times when some glimmer of hope must be shone, for it is desperation in a time of crisis that brings a person to the edge of the proverbial cliff, where the jagged rocks of life below foam with an unwary eye of remorseless undercurrent in dousing the flame of life’s gift.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is important not to allow for the growing medical crisis to become a moment of desperation in the time of crisis.

Consult with an attorney who is experienced in OPM Disability Retirement Law; allow for the door of hope to remain open, and do not allow desperation in a time of crisis to defeat that which may yet have a solution; it’s just that you may not know about the solution, but consulting with a Specialist in the field of FERS Disability Retirement Law may be the pathway out of a misperceived situation of desperation in a time of crisis.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The image we cling to

Whether of a “bad boy”, a “choir boy” and some other like, “He is such a quite, obedient and unassuming young lad,” or even, “She is a real go-getter” — whatever the image created, whether by our own manufacturing or by the reputation pasted upon by others, the image we cling to can remain with us such that it haunts and trails like the residue of those ghosts of Christmas past.

Are reputations and images one and the same?

They certainly cross over from border and fence to similar lines of demarcation, such that the jumble of what others say, think and believe about you are an admixture of one’s self-image, the reflection of how we think about ourselves and what we believe others believe about ourselves.  Changing the image we cling to is often difficult; believing in the change, nigh impossible and rarely achieved.

Whether from the incremental and sometimes insidious perpetuation from the subconscious destructiveness haunting one from a childhood past, or of reinforced negativity from bad parenting or abusive relatives, an image is a residue of a tapestry complicated by those unknown circuitry making up what is generically identified as one’s inner “conscious” life.

It is, as some philosophers would put it, the “ghost in the machine” — of that something “other” that eerily floats about above and beyond the collection of cells, genetic matter and neurotransmitters.  It is “who we are”, or more aptly, “who we think we are”.

For Federal and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the image we cling to is often the one that prevents us from doing that which is best for ourselves.

We think of ourselves as hard-working, conscientious, never-a-slacker, and conflate that self-image with performance ratings, step-increases, promotions and awards, and it is that compendium of reputation-to-self-image that marks our downfall when a medical condition hits the brick wall of reality.

What are our priorities?  Do we cling to the images manufacture, at all costs — even to our own detriment?

Preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a silent admission that the image we cling to may not be the reality one hoped for; but to live in an alternative reality when one’s health is at stake, is to ignore the obvious, and to fall prey to the destructive tendencies of an uncaring world.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not to destroy the image of ourselves that we cling to; rather, it is merely a recognition that we, too, are human and imperfect, and it is the shedding of perfection that is often the greatest problem we face.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Fear of one’s shadow

What does that metaphor mean?  Perhaps to different people, different and varying things — of constantly being on edge despite nothing objectively to be anxious about; of fearing the worst around every bend and corner; of imagining impending doom despite the best of times; of never being able to enjoy that which has been attained or accomplished; and a multitude of similar circumstances that evoke an image of a person who remains in a perpetual flux of emotional turmoil.

Does this describe you?  Perhaps there is a reason — some Freudian abscess deep within the damaged psyche of an individual, unidentified and undetected, originating from a trauma experienced in childhood; or, he’s just a “nervous sort of fellow”.  Fear of one’s shadow is that person who expects the worst even within circumstances that highlight the best.  It is not just a lack of confidence, nor a pessimism that pervades against the reality of the illuminated world; rather, it is the expectation of disaster when reality fails to coincide with shadows that fail to appear even when all around you darkness dominates.

Perhaps we have done a disservice to this newest generation, and the one before, by always encouraging them with hope, never criticizing them, and allowing them to always think “positively” about themselves, their expectations and their future.  Then, when reality abuts against the expectation of anticipated success, this young generation falls apart and is inadequately prepared to handle failure.

Fear of one’s shadow is often the byproduct of an upbringing unprepared and unfortunately ill-prepared to become responsive to failures in life’s cycle of successes and failures.  It is, in many ways, a protective mechanism, where fear is the dominant factor in order to shield one from the reality of the world around.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the fear of one’s shadow may not be so unrealistic — especially as it concerns how the agency or the Postal Service will act, react, respond to or otherwise initiate sanctions, actions and administrative proposals if you fail to return to a previous level of productivity and attendance regularity.  For, in the end, the Federal Agency and the Postal Service are not in a protective role; rather, they are often the adversary that needs to be constantly reminded of “the laws” that protect and preserve human dignity and contractual responsibilities.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, remember always that it is not one’s own shadow that needs to be feared, but rather, the looming figure behind your own shadow that may come unexpectedly to attack you, and that is why you need to consult with an experienced attorney in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: Ikebana and life

Flower arrangement is an ancient art form that reflects the conduit of living.  If you look up the etymology in wikipedia, the term is derived from 2 simple concepts in Japanese: “Ikeru” (meaning, “to live” or “living”) and “hana” (as “flower”).  Thus, the two concepts combined form the compound meaning that embraces multiple connotations — of paralleling one’s manner of living by the arrangement of flowers that fill the home; of the appreciation of such arrangement in reflecting the order or disorder in one’s own life; and of allowing the fragrance of life to permeate throughout one’s personal circumstances, etc.

The type of arrangement one engages; the sparseness or fullness that one orders; the manner in which color and form are aggregated, placed, trimmed and gathered — these can all mirror and duplicate the parallel universe of one’s own life.  An Ikebana arrangement can reveal much, both about a person and the inner soul, the life’s worth, the worthiness of deeds accomplished, and the lifetime of the values imparted.

Medical conditions can do the same — they tell not only about a person’s will to live and the endurance of pain and suffering within this world, but also about everyone else and how a society treats its workers.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal Worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, the long and arduous journey through one’s medical condition must be met with the complex administrative process of filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Through such a bureaucratic process, one will encounter the same things that are reflected in Ikebana and life: of a life that must be rearranged; of colors, shadows and hues that must be mixed and matched; and of the ordering of priorities encountered, the changes of that which thrives or wilts; all of these, like Ikebana and life itself, must be considered when preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Attorney: Today’s tomorrow

Yesterday’s today is different from today’s today, just as tomorrow’s imaginary today will be considerably changed from the actual tomorrow of tomorrow.  How to test that theory?  Just read a book, a novel, a short story when you are a teenager, an adult, a “mature” person or in your old age – say, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or some other similar-type work, or even Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge or even a truer test like a children’s book — the classic Seuss series, The Cat in the Hat, etc.

Perspectives alter and become modified with time, age, experience and encounters with reality, bifurcating between the monster within one’s own imagination, the projection of fears, anxieties and trepidations, and the reality of the world that one finally engages.  The memories one holds of one’s childhood may soften and become tempered over time; the harshness of judgment one may hold of one’s parent’s – their actions, punishments meted, words spoken out of turn and thoughtlessly – may be modified as one becomes a parent as well and encounters the same difficulties, trials and tests; and so the yesterday experienced at the time may alter from the yesterday remembered and ensconced within the context of one’s own life experiences.

Today’s today, or course, is the reality we must always face, but of tomorrow’s tomorrow, can we set aside the suppress the anxieties and fears we project?  The real problem is almost always today’s tomorrow –  of that projection into the future, not yet know, surrounded by the anticipation of what we experience today, fear for tomorrow and tremble at because of all of the various factors and ingredients of the unknown.  Yes, it is today’s tomorrow that we fear most.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is the tomorrow that we consider and ponder upon today that makes for the fears to arise, the anxieties to develop and the trembling to occur.

How best to treat today’s tomorrow?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the first step towards assuaging the fears projected unto tomorrow before tomorrow arrives, is by taking affirmative steps today in order to prepare for tomorrow, and that first step is to consult with an expert in the field of Federal Disability Retirement.

For, today’s tomorrow will come sooner than tomorrow’s today’s blink of an eye and bypass yesterday’s today in the memories of a childhood steeped in tomorrow’s yesterday.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Character Deficits

We all have them; we just never like to admit them to others (which, of course, becomes unnecessary and an irrelevancy if one has a spouse, who is more than willing with energetic bluntness and zeal to volunteer as the one to point them out, quite vocally at that, and without a hint of jealousy at not having them, and with a fury of warning looks darting at crosswinds if one dares to suggest otherwise).  Whether by deep in the recesses of forgotten caverns of childhood psyche damaged in the whirlwinds of growing up, or infected by osmosis by bad company in good times, we will never know.

Freudians believe in such origins within the occipital lobe (or was that post-Freudian or Jungian?); and Aristotle believed in the irrelevancy of such judgments until late in one’s life; but at every stage of a linear progression in life’s trials, we recognize the negation of perfection, and that is clearly represented by the mirror image of the ruling animal of this earth.

Most of us battle throughout our lives – not so much to correct the deficiencies, but to deny, rebut and otherwise patch over any allegations and prosecutorial insinuations that we have them.  In other words, we worry more about the appearance of reputation, as opposed to the essence of the core by which we exist, and to that extent, Plato was right in directing our attention to the universality of Forms, thereby concentrating our attention upon extrapolated natures and thus allowing for the conversation of human folly to be engaged in by third-person accounts and objectified measures.

Otherwise, if we look too closely to the glare of our own reflection, the ugliness of a magnified being would be too much to bear.  Has there ever been a time in history when man held closely to the self-realization of such negations of angelic features?  Perhaps when the onerous hand of belief, the days of torture in Seville when the Grand Inquisitor roamed the homes of suspected idolatry (and spurred the imagination which produced Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov); but even then, we all reserve our suspicions that the closeted man was just as evil, just as mischievous and likely more so in the veil of virtue and virulent self-flagellation against vices known or otherwise hidden.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who experience the modern version of a witch-hunt, it is time to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to escape the wrath of the Agency’s predatory appetite.  The U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Agency are predatory animals who can sniff out the scent of weakened prey; and as the Federal or Postal employee, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, who has a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, necessarily becomes the focus of attention, it becomes an inevitability that issues involving character deficits will arise.

From the agency’s standpoint:  No longer the competent golden boy or wonder girl, but suddenly faults abound and in endless streams of negative assessments.  From the Federal or Postal employee’s perspective:  The continuing battle to prove ourselves.  Is it all worth it?  Or is it just another character deficit that we have to contend with, as we have been doing all of our tireless lives?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement from OPM: Identity Crisis

It is how we view ourselves as one entity among others; where the I-Thou relationship corresponds to the perspective we have of ourselves, of others, and within the micro and macro-communities we engage and with which we interact.  Who we are; how we see ourselves; what constitutes value and worth; whether productivity is defined merely by the volume of paperwork shuffled, or in the manufacturing of items shipped to far-off places; and the constancy of eyes which discern the essence of a person’s place in society.  One’s identity is intimately and intangibly intertwined with one’s job, profession and vocation of choice — or where one simply “fell into” the morass of growing from teenager to adulthood.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who begin to suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts one’s livelihood, the vocation one has aspired to for the past few years, decades, and throughout one’s lifetime; or for the Postal worker and Federal employee who have viewed the position as merely a “pass-through” job in order to obtain certain credentials and qualifying clearances; in either cases, when a medical condition begins to prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, there often erupts a crisis of identity, precisely because of the intimacy between one’s health and one’s capacity and ability to work.

The proverbial “identity crisis” occurs precisely because of the intersection between the tripartite conditions which society has placed with a burden of chaotic rationale:  Who we are; What we do; Our value tied to productivity and “doing”.  Where health begins to deteriorate, the ability and capacity to remain “productive” diminishes; regression of “doing” reduces one’s market value in a society which idolizes comparative worth; and as what we do becomes less valuable, who we are shrinks in the eyes of the macroeconomic stratosphere of societal valuation.

Time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  For, when the Federal or Postal employee begins to embrace the identity crisis of this vast bureaucracy of the Federal sector or the U.S. Postal Service, it is time to move on.

“Moving on” is to simply accept the devaluation system of monetary policy of the Federal agency and the U.S. Postal Service; but it is the personal identity crisis which must always be dealt with, and for the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s perspective of self-worth, it is time to exit from the abyss of deterioration, and take the positive and affirmative step by preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire